Move the pendulum back — toward the taxpayers

Move the pendulum back — toward the taxpayers

“Presiding Judge Peter B. Mulholland announced that municipal court bailiffs and clerks will take 50 percent pay cuts and work full-time for half pay and also agreed to cut his own salary 50 percent for two months.”

That’s a paragraph from a Vindicator story of April 4, 1934.

We’re not about to argue that those were the good old days, five years into what we now refer to as the Great Depression. But clearly public employees and public officials in 1934 recognized that their livelihood was dependent on the city’s ability to pay. They knew that they were there to serve the city, not that the city was there to provide for them.

Somewhere between then and now, the relationship between government and government employees reversed. And somewhere over that 75-year period, there had to be a time in the transition when balance was achieved — when employees were earning a reasonable wage, within a budget taxpayers could support.

Whenever that time may have been, it isn’t now.

Back in 1934, when Youngstown’s municipal court judge was volunteering to take a 50 percent pay cut, almost all other city employees were at half-pay. Firemen had volunteered to work at half pay; the police chief ordered his men to follow suit.

That’s an awful lot of power for a police chief to have. No city will return to that day. We’re not arguing that any should.

But consider what’s happening today. Specifically, consider what’s happening in the city of Youngstown and in Mahoning County government.

Forget ‘me too’

In the city, Mayor Jay Williams announced he was taking a 10 percent cut in pay and benefits, a gesture that some other city employees have openly derided. Nothing short of Williams following the lead of Judge Mulholland and taking a 50 percent cut would please some city employees — and even then some of them wouldn’t agree to a 10 percent cut.

Officials of the eight unions representing city employees are unanimous in their rejection of any attempt to reopen contract negotiations or any talk of concessions. Even Williams’ suggestion that layoffs could be avoided if employees gave up “special pay” — uniform allowances, longevity pay for veteran employees, YMCA membership subsidies and premium pay for higher education — were rejected.

Police rejected a proposal by Williams that they work and be paid for 36 hours rather than 40 hours. This would have not only spread the sacrifice from the newest cop to the most veteran officer, it would have allowed the city to avoid laying off 22 to 26 police officers because it would have saved the city the cost of unemployment benefits and severance pay.

Even though Edward Colon, president of the 116-member police patrol officers union, said he didn’t want to “fathom the impact” of such layoffs, he has rejected compromise.

And younger employees who are likely to be laid off are apparently willing to take the hit, sacrificing their own welfare today for that of better-paid veterans — out of a sense of solidarity or a hope that someday, they, too, will be comfortably assured of good pay, full health coverage, great pensions (and uniform allowances, longevity pay, YMCA membership subsidies and premium pay for higher education).

But unless the laws of economics are suspended, public employees are going to have to recognize that the pendulum has swung too far. Their pay and benefits in almost every job category exceed those of people doing comparable work in the private sector.

The people who live and work in Youngstown cannot afford to support 850 city employees in the style to which they have become accustomed. A downtown that was once teeming with physicians, accountants and lawyers is now populated primarily by government workers. Hundreds of those who had the ability to leave the city and avoid its 2.75 percent income tax have done so. And who can blame them for fleeing to the suburbs? Certainly not the city unions, which have fought for years to overturn Youngstown’s residency requirement.

Mayor Williams must move quickly in announcing layoffs. The longer he waits, the more jobs he’ll have to cut to balance the budget.

It is not too late for the Solidarity Group, which includes officials from each of the unions representing city workers, to declare itself in solidarity with the administration in reaching a compromise that best serves the taxpayers and residents of the city.

Meanwhile, at the Courthouse

As to Mahoning County’s financial problems, some departments are obviously more cognizant of what has to be done than others. Glaringly absent from the realists is Probate Court Judge Mark Belinky, who seems intent on taking his demand for more operating money to the courts, hoping the commissioners will be ordered to give him the money he wants. Of course, if Belinky wins, other departments will lose. In that case, the commissioners might want to ask the judge who should pay for his victory. Should deputy sheriffs face deeper pay cuts? Should deputies be laid off? Or an assistant prosecutor or two?

Perhaps another court should be asked to take deeper cuts so that Judge Belinky can be indulged. That would set off a fine chain reaction.

Our advice to the judge would be the same as that offered others: There’s less money to go around in almost every sector of the economy. Businesses have been adapting right along; now everyone in government has to do likewise.